When the acclaimed Venice Baroque Orchestra (VBO) arrives in concert at the Lobero Theatre on Tuesday, February 17, it will officially be a serious music occasion, performed by a highly praised proponent of Baroque music practice. Conductor/violinist Gianpiero Zanocco will lead the musical charge of a program dubbed Duello d’archi a Venezia (A Venetian Duel of Bows), following on the heels of a recording released in 2023 (hear it here).
On the program will be 18th-century music by Vivaldi, Veracini, Tartini, and Locatelli, with often-virtuosic violin concertos taken on by the gifted Zanocco, who has been with the group since 2003. As part of its Masterseries season, CAMA is hosting the orchestra, which gave us another Vivaldi-enriched program at Campbell Hall in 2014. In another local Venetian/Vivaldian connection, the CAMA-presented Philharmonic Baroque Orchestra appeared at the Granada in 2024, a mask-and-cloak-welcome event.
VBO was founded in 1997 by harpsichordist/scholar Andrea Marcon, and it is well-established and well-documented on recordings by now. Founding violist Allesandra Di Vincenzo commented, “We didn’t begin our journey in order to fill any great void, but simply just to express our own idea of Baroque music, keeping in mind that there are many different ways of playing baroque, all worthy.”
VBO takes its rightful place among the coterie of internationally respected early music ensembles, but it can claim a particularly boasting right, as Di Vincenzo pointed out, noting, “The only void we really fill was in Venice, because Venice Baroque Orchestra was the first baroque orchestra to be found in Venice.
“In fact, VBO was founded by Andrea Marcon after he met the members of a small chamber ensemble, the only early music group in Venice until that moment, called Accademia di San Rocco. Marcon and those musicians felt together the need to found a bigger ensemble in order to play, especially Venetian music, and afford all that kind of baroque repertoire that requires big instrumentation, like operas, oratorios, masses, concerti grossi.”
All will not be furrowed of brow on the upcoming, fateful Tuesday night. Vintage Venetian masks and cloaks are welcome aboard that night, as part of acceptable regalia for the celebration of Venetian Carnivale, which takes place in early February, leading up to Shrove Tuesday, the day before the start of the Lenten season.
Venice’s Bacchanalian celebration, launched in 1162, was banned in 1797 but reinstated in 1979. The event has subsequently become a tourism magnet, not unlike Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Carnaval in Brazil. The run-up to the privations of Lent, it turns out, lends a ripe excuse for major partying, even in the intimate West Coast outpost of Lobero Theatre.
The Venice Baroque Orchestra performs Tuesday, February 17, 7:30 p.m., at the Lobero Theatre (33 E. Canon Perdido St.). Seebit.ly/4ryTGjh.
